I wouldn't consider Stilwell and the American Experience in China 'inaccurate' as more revisionist scholars might. As is often mentioned within historical circles, a dispassionate fact-based reading of history is impossible to achieve for any historian. Tuchman is no different, and her writing very much reflects the almost purely American source base she draws upon. Her critical view of the effectiveness of air power in China, the wastage of American aid, and Guomindang refusal to fight the Japanese was shared by many American advisers close to Stilwell, with Frank Dorn and John Service being two notable examples. This isn’t an ‘inaccurate’ view of the situation in China - but it is one with a lack of nuance that reflects the purely military ‘win war, go home’ attitude that many Americans had in the China theatre. Chinese historians since the 1990s have striven to provide the nuance lacking from Tuchman’s work.

The bad blood between Stilwell and Chiang is true. The Diaries of Stilwell, which can be accessed without restrictions here, makes for hard reading. The absolute loathing for ‘Peanut’, Stilwell’s nickname for Chiang, seeps out of its pages (pinging /u/EnclavedMicrostate for the obligatory Peanut mention), and Tuchman’s reverence for Stilwell and dismissal of Chiang is most likely derived from her access to Stilwell’s diaries (a first among historians I believe, other than the Official History of the CBI Theatre). It took until the 1990s and 2000s, with the publication of Van de Ven’s double broadside of ‘Stilwell in the Stocks: the Chinese Nationalists and the Allied Powers in the Second World War’ and War and Nationalism in China, 1925–45 for Chinese historians to reconsider the Stilwell-Chiang relationship. Current consensus places much blame on Stilwell’s stubbornness and general unpleasantness for the poisoning of Chinese-American relations in the war.

Tuchman’s critical view of air power is another reflection of her use of Stilwell-biased sources. There was serious debate between Stilwell and Chennault, the commander of the US Fourteenth Air Force in China, over the allocation of meagre resources delivered by an aerial supply route from India to China. Stilwell, supported by Army officers, wanted to use these supplies to train and equip the Guomindang army for offensive action. Chennault, supported by Air Force officers, argued that air power could play a decisive role in crippling Japanese forces in China. The limited supplies delivered to China could not sustain both plans at once, and resulted in serious animosity between the Stilwell and Chennault camps. Chennault won the argument through the support of both Chiang and Roosevelt and achieved admirable results with his limited resources. However, Stilwell was indeed partially justified in claiming that the use of air power would lead to a Japanese offensive with the aim of destroying inland airfields, which occurred in the form of Operation Ichigo in 1944. The debate over the decisiveness of air power in the China theatre continues among historians to this day. Chi Hsi-sheng’s The Much Troubled Alliance: US-China Military Cooperation During the Pacific War, 1941-1945 has a detailed section on the Chennault-Stilwell rivalry, although I disagree with his conclusion that the air power debate was strategically irrelevant.

There is some truth in American accusations that the handling of aid was plagued with corruption. Corruption was rife in Guomindang China, especially since the wages of government officials and officers were fixed and not adjusted for inflation. From a Chinese perspective, it would be hard not to take advantage of the system, as sticking to your principles would have the consequence of starving your family. However, Judd Kinzley’s ‘The power of the “Stockpile”: American aid and China’s Wartime everyday’ points out that the image of a supply bottleneck due to Guomindang corruption and ineptitude was largely a figment of American imagination that disregarded the very real difficulties of transporting goods and supplies into a blockaded China. As he states:

The stockpiles in India were shaped as much by the chaotic retreat from Rangoon in 1942, during which Chinese goods were shipped to Calcutta and Karachi and haphazardly piled up around the docks there not by Chinese officials but by British and American soldiers; by the complex logistical problems presented by the rapid expansion of Indian ports in 1942 following the occupation of Burma; by interagency and international competition between Indian, American, and British organs charged with overseeing some element of the larger Allied transport and storage network; and also by the unwillingness of the United States and Britain to grant China a seat on the all-powerful Munitions Assignment Board.

Guomindang inefficiency and corruption played a relatively minor role in the creation of a ‘stockpile’.

The idea that the Guomindang did not commit resources to fight the Japanese is another accusation that lacks nuance. By 1941, most Chinese divisions were incapable of conducting offensive operations. Chiang and his military commanders knew that Guomindang troops simply could not be relied upon to perform well in battle, despite Stilwell’s and Roosevelt’s pleas for an offensive in China. In any case, Chiang had pledged his best troops for a campaign in Burma. However, the enthusiastic Chinese support for a Burma campaign was negated by American and British indifference, and for various reasons an offensive with a start date in early 1943 did not occur until mid-1944. Guomindang military figures were understandably frustrated when their offer to cooperate in Burma was ignored, and were instead directed by their allies to conduct an unaided offensive in China. There is no denying Chiang actively pushed back against the idea of an offensive in China. That said, his analysis that an offensive would aid the allied effort but not China itself was justified by Operation Ichigo, in which most Guomindang forces proved incapable of even token resistance when confronted with advancing Japanese columns.

At the end of the day, Stilwell and the American Experience is not a ‘bad’ or ‘inaccurate’ history book. It simply reflects American perceptions of the CBI theatre that persisted well into the 1990s. Despite its one-sided account of events, it still remains a valuable piece of historical writing that continues to influence scholars of the Second Sino-Japanese War.